Canon anxiety

According to chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks, our shared cultural inheritance—“predicated on the idea of a canon, a set of texts that everyone knew”—is being destroyed by multiculturalism and tecnology. In his essay this month, Richard Jenkyns questions the need for a strictly defined canon—where “the great books form a clearly determinate class.” Society does need shared references, he argues, but these need not be high cultural: “In their time, Morecambe and Wise did more than Milton and Wordsworth to make us feel one as people.” Disaffected young Asians are hardly going to feel more “British” after being force-fed Hamlet, Middlemarch and the Psalms. Nevertheless, Jenkyns identifies a growing “canon anxiety” among contemporary intellectuals, and attributes this partly to the fact that our age lacks “cultural heroes”—giving rise to the tendency to venerate our inheritance from the past; indeed, to canonise it. Yet heroism is itself a problematic and highly subjective term. Much as we might define the canon differently, might we not also find more “heroes” if we broaden the terms of reference? Or are both of these endeavours vain attempts to compensate for what, as Sacks argues, is being lost? Let us know what you think.

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Comments

Sue

November 24, 2007 at 01:55

Has anyone ever noticed that those on the right who favour a fixed "canon" are often quite fond of the cannons that go bang! too.

Patrick Glass

June 1, 2016 at 13:02

Sue - 'Has anyone ever noticed that those on the right who favor a fixed "canon" are often quite fond of the cannons that go bang! too'.
Too true. Believers in conventions: forms, rituals, rigidity, obedience as a virtue, hero worship, and the authoritarian personality. If you don't believe in god (small 'g' is deliberate) and accept our canon (Bible, Shakespeare, etc) are you to be trusted? Surely anything goes. And yes, in the main, we're lovers of dogs (so obedient), and haters of cats (too independent). Things simply are 'this way' - and they must remain so. It's always worked: for the sake of Order. For heaven's sake - No Surprises!
What kind of Order: where has the canon led us? For example, the blindness of WW1. It's surely puzzling how a generation sleepwalked to death - for four years.
In 1914, were they reading their Bibles - 'an eye for an eye' (OT), or 'love thy neighbor as thyself' (NT)? Could they believe that Christ would carry carry a gun, use a bayonet - and bomb civilians? There were only 16,000 Conscientious Objectors in England in WW1 (and many of these were Quakers). Little wonder Freud came up with the Thanatos Instinct. Does man really have a Death Wish? Not so. Total war is The Aberration of the 20th century. Cross culturally, Total War is an absurdity. We should re-think, and take note of the Great Canon of Mankind - starting with Buddha.

John Forth

November 24, 2007 at 02:14

Meanwhile we now live in a multi-cultural world, or a very small boat in which we are all face to face, where all of the texts and Sacred Scriptures of the entire Great Tradition of Humankind are freely available to everyone on the internet. As such they are all our common inheritance.
Consequently we need to go to school and de-provincialise our inherited cultural scripts by becoming acquainted with their key arguments and also find the common moral centre at the core of these Sacred Texts.
The common moral centre being the call to self transcending love and service of all beings---not just good works.
And speaking of the true heroes of Humankind, arent they the great Spiritual Realizers who wrote these very same Sacred Texts. All of the great cultures have at their core such a Realizer or many Realizers as in the Hindu and Buddhist Traditions. The catholic and Eastern Christian Traditions have the equivalence in their Illuminated Saints. The Protestant Tradition doesnt even allow for saints and is hence spiritually impoverished.

Albin Forone

November 24, 2007 at 20:40

I deny the premise that "everyone knew" a canon. For better or worse, no more than the best-educated 5% or less of any western society has ever had any more than cursory knowledge of the relevant "canon" so that, instead of a pitch for what "the general public" should have but never actually has read, it's really a much less credible and profitable suggestion about what certain already self-confident cultural elites should read, that the rest should accept on the basis of good will or faith. I can't wish this thesis even an hearty "good luck."

Ryan

November 29, 2007 at 17:43

I think about this subject at times..."high-brow versus low." It is a tough philosophical problem because who's to say I don't learn more about the human condition from watching the interactions between two participants in a televised reality show than from the fictitious same in a Dickens novel?
Being well-read, my assumption is that a canon is very important. But am I in some way "better off" than someone who has not read these books? I can't prove that.
Richard Jenkyns is correct about the political climate. As I sit in the U.S., it is not "cool" or "popular" to discuss the great tomes of literature with 99% of the population. In fact, there is an outspoken bias against intellectuals among many of my acquaintances. It could be related to a feeling of inferiority or just that ignorance is bliss.
I believe that no piece of knowledge is to be valued "morally better" than another no matter how mundane. But if you asked me to trade my knowledge of the fine works of the canon for that of current popular culture, I never would.

Greg

December 4, 2007 at 05:28

The following recent article asks:
- Wasn't serious reading thought to be a tradition of traditions since the lessons learned from the literary masterpieces of the past served as a bridge between the generations? Didn't the wisdom gained from the study and discussion of the classics encourage us to contemplate philosophical questions pertaining to the way of human nature, the way of the world and the meaning of life?
http://starbulletin.com/2007/06/03/editorial/commentary.html

Robson Pacheco de Souza (from Rio de Janeiro)

December 7, 2007 at 01:49

Who need any heroes?
Excuse me guys, but the heart of the matter isnâ€™t a moral, idols or love, the center of the essay is worry about the sense of importance or not, of the presents or the futures to young peoples reads the Bible, absorbing the knowledge into the Canon â€“ Thatâ€™s the question - to guide any different cultural abroad the world.
- The abridgment of the text saids "Jonathan Sacks is right that we need a common culture, but wrong to think it should be based on a canon. Forcing young people to read the Bible [â€¦]". Thatâ€™s the question!
Read the canon without goods devices of support, like as theological classes; corrects doctrines books; essays of discussion about the hermeneutic comprehension; and so, a small helpful from Sprit of God - because the humans wisdom isnâ€™t sufficient to understand that we need to know about the whole mysteries of universe; so limited as well fallacy in it self. How will be an appropriate goodwill for our life? Can it alones words improving independents verses withdraw to the Canon? Like to say quickly â€“ almost nothing! Because the Canon complete the most important thinking of the Lordâ€™s mind, shaking the mysteries from wisdom of God. This is very paradoxical to unbelievers - certainly close the transcendent and the immanent from absolute of God, concerning that He became human, but without loosing his connection to the divine.
Itâ€™s easer to think little of the The Bible, without to know Godâ€™s Words deeply. Its look like to describe how is to be in pains, that another people is suffering â€“ absolutely not true, running out The Canon to establish a postmodern values. We donâ€™t need a heroes, a idols, some humans models or, behaviorâ€™s shapes, but it needs straight a view watching a gold point in future, resuming a whole thatâ€™s important: GENERAL PRINCIPLES to lay the blame on by own self, based by a True of The Word of God.
For the rest, the culture is very important; arts rising the minds; conceiving all of thinks of the world, like a giftâ€™s God, for a men and women as well; but if we donâ€™t have a True â€“ a really True - below of us supporting absolute ideas and principles: Why can humanity do? Everything may be relative, yet the comprehension of God desires, for a lot of people that would like to see the man in the same status of Godâ€™s power, felling great and powerful like Him. But we are free guys, to think and admit our freedom in Godâ€™s line or without God grace. Well, You decide, but â€¦ if Heâ€™ll permit!
The multiform grace of God is sufficiently big to absorb some thoughts about the different cultural trends. The author claims â€œbut the question is one of perception. Our age lacks living cultural heroesâ€. With set position, he shows that is lacking the mind and blocking off self-perception, when said this things. Who need any heroes? May be the Army or Hollywood ! The peoples, who are living in this turn of the Century needs peace, freedom, and anything more really true to believe, so yet the Words of God inside in a Canon form.

joe panther

December 9, 2007 at 18:09

Let me go off the deep end here: The decline in both the ability to create works of genius, rare as it is, and the ability to appreciate and benefit from exposure to works of genius is due to the electronic matrix we are all now living in. I am a schoolteacher and I think it is nearly impossible for young people to read something like Shakespeare with anything like the attention with which it was written or read over the previous centuries. There is too much electronic background noise in people's heads today: TV, recorded music, text messages, a potential phone call, incoming or outgoing, literally in one's pocket, accessible at any time, not to mention I'm wondering, as I write this, if there's something new on Huffington Post worth checking out. I think works of genius came from artists manipulating the natural sounds and stimuli which were coming in: not only the sounds of nature, but also if human voices were heard, they were real people speaking in that moment only, if music was audible, it was being played by real human beings in the immediate area. I am from the Thucydides school of human development - Thucydides had the great insight to see that Athens' rise to prominence was based on the poverty of its soil, which made it unattractive to raiding populations. I think great artists, and great human beings, similarly arise from what we would now call a relative paucity of external stimulation.

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